With his new freedom Shevchenko finds himself in a different world. Not
only does he meet the most brilliant people of the Russian
Capital—scientists, artists, generals, nobles are his intimates. Count
Tolstoi and Prince and Princess Repnin are his patrons.
He is introduced, too, in Russian or Polish translations to the great
authors of other lands and times,—Greece and Rome, Germany and Britain
offer him their treasures.
To us it is interesting to know that Byron, Walter Scott, and
Shakespeare profoundly influenced him.
But a conflict of spirit now faces him. His worldly interests and his
judgment advise him to go on with his painting. But strange music seems
to ring in his ears. It is the music of his beautiful and suffering
Ukraine. Songs seem to come to him from the wind and he writes them
down.
They are in the peasant language of the Ukraine.
His ‘Kobzar’ appears in its first edition, with eight poems, in 1840.
It is like a lightning flash through Russia.
Great Russian critics sneered at it, saying it was in the language of
the swineherds. But the whole Ukraine recognized it as the voice of
their suppressed nation. The down-trodden masses of all Russia knew
that they had found a spokesman.
Shevchenko was now famous but he had chosen, without knowing it, ‘The
Way of the Cross.’